Response to a Refusenik

Posted on May 1, 2006 in Psycho-bunk Stigma

You run into these people, the ones who say that psychiatry is evil, that they can get by without the medications. You look at their comments on other blogs and you see that they have self-control problems because they post responses to EVERYONE about EVERYTHING that is said. They declare themselves masters of their illness, but it is obvious that they lack control of their impulses. They are miniature Tom Cruises without Scientology, proponents of anti-psychiatry who declare to have found a magical remedy for their illness, droning like crickets whose one word is chirp.

Mind you that I am not a lot of things: a fan of big drug companies and their profiteering, a believer in ECT, or a supporter of involuntary commitment without evidence of danger to self or others. But I have little tolerance for the stigma from within the body of the afflicted, from those who refuse to take medications because they are so caught up in their mental illness that they are thralls to their disease.

Here is what I wrote, in part, in response to someone who has been making the rounds of bipolar and therapeutic blogs in a crusade to insult us by association with the psychiatric profession:

“The meds helped me more than anything else when it comes to relieving me of the effects of this illness. I went for years suffering from bipolar disorder, believing myself well as I fought with other people, drove recklessly, and found myself jumping from depression to mania and back again. went from emergency to emergency.

“I made a choice to take meds. All my psychiatrists supported me. They explained the choices, negotiated them, and encouraged me to pursue a true holistic lifestyle. They encouraged me to be a consumer, to inform myself. And I did.

“If you extend from assertions that psychiatry is filled with narcissistic control freaks along the lines of logic, I must be a stupid person, a dupe, and a slave to the medications.

“If the latter is true, it is better to thrallishly eat my lithium than to be a slave to the disease.

“I refuse those labels because I chose to trust my psychiatrists. They were there for me in my hours of darkness. If I ever do have a bad one, I promise you that I will walk. And I also walk from bad advice given by those who rant rant rant against the whole of the psychiatric profession, denying the individuals their right to uniqueness and recognition of their compassion.

“We should give unto others what we expect for ourselves. We should think about the full implications of our pet theories and our expression of them.”